Has your character ever wandered into a bar, tavern or inn and wanted to pass some time? Does your character want to make some quick and have the itch for cards and dice? Or do you just want to play some mini games inside of your game?
Well in this side-series of posts, we’ll cover some popular casino games and how your characters can play them in your games.
First off: Blackjack
Blackjack
The rules of Blackjack are fairly simple: you want to get as close to the number 21 without going over. Go over and you lose, get closer to 21 than the rest of the group (or the dealer) and you win. This works pretty much exactly like a Sigil System Skill Check, so it should be quite familiar.
Rather than using cards, for Sigil Blackjack you use d10s. Just like with the cards, when you roll a 1 you can choose whether it counts as a 1 or an 11. So if you roll a 10 and a 1, you can declare that 1 to be an 11 and you got your 21 right there.
To start a game of blackjack, everyone places their bets (which we’ll get to below), and then and then all the players involved roll 2d10 to get their starting numbers. The players can then elect to stay at their current number, or to roll an additional d10 to add to their total. This goes on until everyone has decided to stay at their totals, or have gotten a number higher than 21. Then, whomever has gotten closest to 21 takes the pot. If more than one person got 21, they share the pot.
Note: that this only counts if you play informally in a group. If your character walked into a casino and is playing against a dealer, then count every player as playing a single game against the dealer, rather than each other.
Extra Rules
Splitting: If you roll doubles, you can decide to turn each dice into its own bet and its own hand. This means that you bet a second time, and roll an additional dice for each existing dice. Playing two hands at once doubles your chances at succeeding, but it also doubles the risk.
And speaking of doubling:
Doubling down: After rolling just 1 more dice (for a total of 3), you can decide you like your hand so much that you are going to double down. This means that you double your bet, but you can’t add any more dice to your totals.
Betting
Betting in the Sigil System works by using “points” of your character’s Wealth Skill Level. If you win, you gain a bonus to your Wealth Skill Check equal to the amount of points you’ve won until such a time as your GM decides you have used up all of your winnings (at least for 1 session). Similarly, you won’t lose any levels in your Wealth Skill if you lose a bet, but you will take a penalty to any Wealth Skill Checks equal to the amount of points your lost.
You can bet as many points of Wealth up to your character’s Wealth Skill Level plus any points you have already won. Other characters can “spot” you some money by taking a penalty to their Wealth Skill Checks, and you will gain some “points” to bet with.